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  <title>The History of Penance and Penitentials</title>
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       <P>  This page contains three sections:<br/> A brief <a href="history.html#history">history</a> of penance and penitentials; the <a href="history.html#post">post-Anglo-Saxon history</a> of the penitentials; and
          <a href="history.html#context">contexts</a> for the study of penance. In addition, you can read an essay, <a href="1990PREF.pdf">"The 'Literariness' of the Penitentials."</a> This essay has not been published in English; it was first published in French as the new introduction to <i>La litt&eacute;rature de la P&eacute;nitence dans L'Angleterre Anglo-Saxonne</i>, Michel Lejeune's translation of <i>The Literature of Penance</i> (Rutgers, NJ, 1983; trans. published in Fribourg by &Eacute;ditions Universitaires, 1991).        
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     <div id="header"><h2 style="margin-right: 1.5em;"><a name="history">The History</a> of Penance and Penitentials</h2></div>
       <P>  <a name="history">The late Anglo-Saxon period</a> (c. 900-1100) was a pivotal moment in the history of
          penitential literature. During this period the English church reshaped the traditional canon of
	  Latin prayers and penitentials, some parts of which dated from the early eighth century, if not
	  before, into a large corpus of penitential documents in the vernacular, the most comprehensive
	  corpus of penitential literature created in the early Middle Ages. 
       </p>
       <p>  Penitentials appear to have originated in Ireland and reached England through the work of
          Irish missionaries. By the late seventh century, the handbook was recognized in England as an
	  important pastoral text. Theodore of  Canterbury was the first non-Irish authority to issue a
	  penitential; early handbooks attributed to other English ecclesiastics (e.g., Egbert and Bede)
	  suggest that the form was quickly assimilated into the disciplinary literature of the English
	  Church. During the ninth century, penitentials of Irish origin were the subject of some
	  controversy on the Continent, but disputes about the orthodoxy of private penance and the
	  literature that regulated it do not appear in English records. 
       </p>
       <p>  England was second only to Ireland in developing a vernacular literature of penance built
          around the private penitential system.  This literature included, in addition to the penitentials,
	  confessional prayers, liturgies, and other forms, such as homilies, laws, and clerical letters, that
	  quote the penitentials or share textual sources with them.  The Anglo-Saxons organized
	  comprehensive collections which included penitentials, ceremonies for public penance, and
	  confessional prayers, and made excerpts from these sources for devotional reading and instruction
	  (e.g., &AElig;lfric's collection at the end of Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.3.28).  
       </p>
       <p>  Penitentials in Anglo-Saxon England were written in both Latin and the vernacular (the
          Latin texts being more numerous) and took various forms; those with elaborate prefatory
	  apparatus circulated alongside those which merely listed tariffs for sins. It is remarkable that the
	  vernacular penitentials of the tenth and eleventh centuries list penances identical to those found in
	  eighth-century texts. Some readers might expect that penitential tariffs would have been
	  revised as the handbooks passed from region to region and century to century; some might
	  regard the uniformity or consistency of penance for some sins as evidence that private confession
	  and penance were not practiced widely. However, the penitentials allowed priests some lattitude
	  when using these guiding materials, so actual penances might have differed from those recorded.
	  It is also important to remember that in many areas the legal system (secular law) is also textually
	  conservative, and that good reason would have been required for altering a traditional penance
	  or legal penalty.
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     <div id="header" style="border-top: double 3px lightyellow;"><h2 style="margin-right: 1.5em;"><a name="post">Post</a> Anglo-Saxon History</h2></div>
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       <p>  In widespread use throughout the medieval period (authorities as late as Abelard endorsed
          them), penitentials were also the subject of uncommon interest in post-Anglo-Saxon England. The
	  vernacular texts written between 950 and 1050 continued in use for over a century after the
	  Norman Conquest. Several manuscripts were annotated by a scribe in Worcester between 1190
	  and 1210; he appears to have been planning to translate the Old English handbooks into his own
	  language (Early Middle English). His work was cut short when the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)
	  set new standards for confession and ensured that older vernacular penitentials would no longer
	  be used for the newly-defined sacrament. Soon thereafter, virtually all administrative penitential
	  texts were written in Latin only, a return to eighth-century standard practices.
       </p>
       <p>  Largely ignored for the next three centuries, the Anglo-Saxon penitentials played a role in
          the English Reformation. Working for Henry VIII, Matthew Parker, then archbishop of Canterbury,
	  interpreted the very manuscripts that the Worcester scribe had annotated as the origins of true
	  "English" Christianity as it had been practiced before the Norman Conquest brought the
	  corruption of Roman observance into England. Parker's <b>A Testimonie of Antiquitie</b> (1565-1566), 
	  the first printed edition of Old English texts, quoted regulations concerning the Eucharist from 
	  penitentials in both Worcester and the Exeter manuscripts (which Parker's helpers
	  annotated for the purpose). The archbishop's belief that Anglo-Saxon penitential discipline was
	  an English rather than a Roman institution was completely erroneous, but it was accepted by
	  many English historians until 1806, when John Lingard, an English priest, reread the
	  penitentials, again using the Worcester and Exeter manuscripts, and demolished Parker's view of them.
       </p>
       <p>  Despite their long and sometimes controversial presence on the stage of history, the
          penitentials and the social history they represent rarely receive more than cursory recognition 
	  in general sources (e.g., Michel Foucault's <b>History of Sexuality </b>, Aron Gurevich's
	  <b>Medieval Popular Culture</b>). The only specialists to work with penitentials have been philologists,
	  editors, and a few literary historians. The reason for this limited scrutiny is not far to seek. 
	  The texts go under a bewildering series of names concocted between 1830 and 1965; the editions 
	  confuse manuscript evidence and obscure the historical differences that the texts register. No 
	  translations are available to supplement these outdated editions. Most early Latin penitentials are 
	  translated only in McNeill and Gamer's <b>Medieval Handbooks of Penance</b> (1938). This collection 
	  omits the vernacular Anglo-Saxon documents and, with Victorian primness, suppresses references 
	  to unorthodox sexuality and other potentially awkward subjects. Its historical conclusions 
	  are a half-century out of date, but <span style="font-style: italic;">Medieval Handbooks</span> was reprinted, 
	  unrevised, in 1991, testifying at once to a new interest in social history and to the moribund 
	  nature of scholarship in this field.
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     <div id="header" style="border-top: double 3px lightyellow;"><h2 style="margin-right: 1.5em;"><a name="context">Contexts</a> for Studying Penance and Penitentials</h2></div>
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       <p>  <b>The Anglo-Saxon Penitentials</b> in this database list penances identical to those found in
          eighth-century texts, a fact that cannot be overlooked when the social significance of these texts is
	  discussed.  It is expected that penitential tariffs would have been revised as the handbooks passed
	  from region to region and century to century.  But the tariffs found in the surviving documents
	  show little change, thus complicating assumptions about how closely penitential practice reflects
	  local customs and daily life in the Middle Ages.
       </p>
       <p>  The major holy seasons of the church year--Advent, Lent, and Pentecost--were those in which
          penance was performed.  Three forms were practiced:  private penance, public penance, and
	  voluntary acts of pious devotion.  Public penance, which in the early Church could be undertaken
	  only once, was required for gravest sins; for example, fratricide or the murder of a cleric carried
	  the penance of exile.  Private penance, which could be repeated, entailed a wide range of
	  penances.  The most frequent penance was fasting (for periods ranging from a few days to several
	  years).  For theft and crimes involving personal injury, restitution was necessary before absolution
	  could be given, a requirement that suggests the importance of ecclesiastical penance in
	  maintaining social order.  The interaction of penance and secular law is apparent as early as the
	  laws of King Alfred (d. 899) and continues in the laws Archbishop Wulfstan (d. 1023) wrote for
	  King Cnut (d. 1035).
       </p>
       <p>  Penitentials should be studied in the context of both devotional and disciplinary traditions, for
          the practice of penance regulated by the penitentials was only part of the large place of confession
	  in medieval spiritual life.  In Anglo-Saxon England confession was made in three ways:  private
	  acknowledgement of sins to the priest; public acknowledgement of sins before the bishop; and
	  devotional exercise in which the sinner confessed in prayer to a ritualized list of sins which
	  probably had little correspondence to his or her spiritual conduct.  Of these three forms, private
	  confession to the priest eventually became the norm, but the body of evidence attesting to the
	  tradition is too vague and incomplete to permit our characterizing any one of these modes as
	  dominant in Anglo-Saxon confessional practice.  The traditional nineteenth-century model of
	  regular confession to the priest cannot be traced to Anglo-Saxon sources; nor can a post-medieval
	  stereotype of penance as a form of social control be automatically applied to Anglo-Saxon
	  sources.  The educational function of confession and penance is rarely recognized, and the
	  relationship of these practices to historical problems of literacy--the use of written texts in a
	  society whose literature and legal system were primarily oral--remains unexplored.  
       </p>
       <p>  No religious institution affected life in the European Middle Ages more directly than
          confession and penance. Penance meant forgiveness, reconciliation, and absolution; it was the
	  Church's chief means of restoring offenders to the fold. Penitential discipline was also a means
	  of socialization and education; through penance the Church supervised numerous elements of
	  daily life, including diet, labor, household organization, and sexuality. Today, scholars in many
	  disciplines struggle to reconceptualize the lived experience of the Middle Ages and to explain the
	  relation of that history to modern social problems--child abuse,
	  literacy, women's rights, and others. As a result, the value of the penitentials, which were once
	  dismissed as records of dark superstitions, has become newly apparent. These areas are hardly the only intersections of modern interests with handbooks of penance, however, although they are the most obvious. Penance was also a process of healing and reconciliation; its spiritual benefits might not outweigh its disciplinary significance in modern eyes, but those benefits are significant nonetheless.
       </p><p>7-2010</p>
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